We recently read a great article about website design, entitled: "15 Tips for Effective Web Design". It was brought to us via MarketingVox and was written by Mark Jackson of Host Review UK. The great news is we completely agree with everything he says.
The bad news is: They forgot to mention testing the designs with consumers.
This is a common mistake made with good intentions. You're attempting to design a web site with all of the bases covered that Mark mentions in this article. But the fact remains, you're not designing this website for you. Or your client. You're designing the website for your customers or your client's customers. As such you need to include them into the design process. Think about the irony of that: designing a site for a customer that you don't include in the process but hope that they will like and use the website after it's done. Doesn't that seem odd?
We call this Outside In Design. You need to go outside of your design to the customer and dial their wants, needs, desires for how they prefer interacting with your brand, via your website, and bring that information into the design.
More typically we see companies that perform the Inside Out Design where they internally decide what to design, write, display on the website without any consumer insights and then releasing that website out to the world, hoping for the best.
Website design testing allows you to hedge your bets so you don't have to simply "hope for the best." You'll have a great insight into what resonates for the consumer as it relates to your website's design because you've already included them in the process. This makes for a much more successful launch and more importantly, a much more successful (and utilized) website.
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